I recently went to a conference for a software product we utilize at my company. During one of the presentations they stated that users should not allow the individual .mdb files to grow above 64GB, and referenced a MS article as their source stating that you should create a second data file before allowing your database to grow this big. I do not have access to that link now, and I cannot find any information to support their claim. Has anyone heard anything like this before, according to msdn the maximum file sizes listed here do not support their statement in the least.

I do know that there are other concerns besides hard size limits such as time to copy to a new location etc, but all things being equal in our installation I would rather keep one data file unless there is a compelling reason to split it up.

No, it is actually an LMS (Learning Management System) for a college. I thought the info was bogus but wanted to get some opinions about if it was a bad idea for some reason I didn't see.
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CharlesOct 8 '09 at 13:50

If that is true, we're totally stuffed. We have an MDB that's well and truly > 64gb.

That said, there are compelling reasons to split it up if you have massive tables that have easilly partitionable information (i.e. all records A-K on one disk, L-Z on another). I set this up many many years ago and I don't remember much about it at all, but it made sense in their situation.

Haha, that is kind of what I was wondering. Gee is there some kind of negative side effect that I missed to this? That being said ours is growing at a rate of about 1 to 2 GB a month so it won't be long before it is gargantuan.
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CharlesOct 8 '09 at 13:51

If you have say, 20 million records in a table, then partitioning the table may well be worth it, but only if the records go on different disks. If they were financial records, for example, you might choose to put records pre 1989 onto a 'slow' disk to free up space on your main drive, as 20-year-old records aren't likely to be queried very often.
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Mark Henderson♦Oct 8 '09 at 20:30